It is spent on containment, so the ideas don't spread to other places.
Anthropologically this is just silly.
In the current form of the Internet, there will always be a dark seedy underbelly. It's pointless to squash it online through various means when you are an organization powerful enough to just backdoor CP or SWAT people to death if you want to eliminate them.
Real power wouldn't play such childish and ineffective games.
I wouldn't describe Media Matters as real power, but the containment strategy is well established. the best example is when they banned /b/ on 4chan. What happened was that all of those users ended up flooding the other boards, creating a tremendous amount of work.
It was a lot more efficient to bring the /b/ board back and moderate the insanity from a central location.
If you are an Internet shill who is being paid to contain a specific political issue, this is the best way to do it. If you silence it, there will be a backlash. If you slowly push users away, many will drop off and the more persistent ones will go to where they can sperg unfettered.
You let them have that place, then you insert flat earth, moon landing stuff, a ton of racism and now the "normies" can't associate with a truth/free speech movement that seeks to expose high level corruption.
/r/The_Donald was always a containment board and the screws have been slowly tightening since the beginning. From the beginning, I was banned for talking about Ruben Vardanyan, who is the smoking gun for Russian collusion by Democrats. His money trail proves the whole media narrative incorrect and blows the Mueller report out of the water. It is very curious that they wouldn't have that type of information stickied.
You let them have that place, then you insert flat earth, moon landing stuff, a ton of racism and now the "normies" can't associate with a truth/free speech movement that seeks to expose high level corruption.
Now this was interesting to think about. Do you have a slightly more specific example of this?
4chan's /b/, /r/conspiracy and godlikeproductions come to mind as the most obvious examples. Reddit uses "Megathreads" to contain discussions, as well. Sometimes, this makes sense, but often it is the easiest way to contain an uncomfortable topic in /r/politics.
It looks like Urban Dictionary already has /r/The_Donald in mind in its definition.
A place to put threads for irritating users while still respecting their freedom to have discussions, it could be a clubhouse or a quarantine.
q: Do you want to talk about Trump?
a: No, go back to your Containment Board!
Your initial instincts are, of course, correct, when it comes to the numbers game. If a community gets large enough, be it on the Internet or irl... like a church, it becomes a target. The concentration makes it cost effective to sway the people. When you find an influencer you can buy off, then it is an easy decision.
But what happens when that group fractures? It is an inevitability.
That is what the tension centered strategies help with. If you plan for fracturing of groups, you are already prepared for taking over the splintered factions and are ready with pre-determined influencers to guide those factions.
Before the Internet, Tavistock already studied all kinds of containment strategies. Before the term "containment board" was used, the term "attractive prison" was used in studies of organizational paradoxes.
Once you have been lured to an "attractive prison" to address a problem, a new, opposite problem is introduced and you are now stuck in a prison dealing with a new problem while forgetting about the old one.
An attractive prison also provides an opportunity to bombard people with strange and new information to trigger cognitive dissonance, which puts people in a primed psychological state to change their mind about something. The founder of the "Children of God" cult specialized in this tactic where he would agitate and then convert.
Basically, all cults are attractive prisons. They promise a higher truth amidst an obviously dishonest environment, then feed followers with fiction. Despite the fictitiousness, these tactics are wildly effective.
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virge ago
Why bother? Voat Alexa ratings put the population <10,000.
That's a lot of money spent for nothing.
thewebofslime ago
It is spent on containment, so the ideas don't spread to other places.
virge ago
Anthropologically this is just silly.
In the current form of the Internet, there will always be a dark seedy underbelly. It's pointless to squash it online through various means when you are an organization powerful enough to just backdoor CP or SWAT people to death if you want to eliminate them.
Real power wouldn't play such childish and ineffective games.
thewebofslime ago
I wouldn't describe Media Matters as real power, but the containment strategy is well established. the best example is when they banned /b/ on 4chan. What happened was that all of those users ended up flooding the other boards, creating a tremendous amount of work.
It was a lot more efficient to bring the /b/ board back and moderate the insanity from a central location.
If you are an Internet shill who is being paid to contain a specific political issue, this is the best way to do it. If you silence it, there will be a backlash. If you slowly push users away, many will drop off and the more persistent ones will go to where they can sperg unfettered.
You let them have that place, then you insert flat earth, moon landing stuff, a ton of racism and now the "normies" can't associate with a truth/free speech movement that seeks to expose high level corruption.
/r/The_Donald was always a containment board and the screws have been slowly tightening since the beginning. From the beginning, I was banned for talking about Ruben Vardanyan, who is the smoking gun for Russian collusion by Democrats. His money trail proves the whole media narrative incorrect and blows the Mueller report out of the water. It is very curious that they wouldn't have that type of information stickied.
virge ago
Now this was interesting to think about. Do you have a slightly more specific example of this?
thewebofslime ago
4chan's /b/, /r/conspiracy and godlikeproductions come to mind as the most obvious examples. Reddit uses "Megathreads" to contain discussions, as well. Sometimes, this makes sense, but often it is the easiest way to contain an uncomfortable topic in /r/politics.
It looks like Urban Dictionary already has /r/The_Donald in mind in its definition.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Containment%20Board
Your initial instincts are, of course, correct, when it comes to the numbers game. If a community gets large enough, be it on the Internet or irl... like a church, it becomes a target. The concentration makes it cost effective to sway the people. When you find an influencer you can buy off, then it is an easy decision.
But what happens when that group fractures? It is an inevitability.
That is what the tension centered strategies help with. If you plan for fracturing of groups, you are already prepared for taking over the splintered factions and are ready with pre-determined influencers to guide those factions.
Before the Internet, Tavistock already studied all kinds of containment strategies. Before the term "containment board" was used, the term "attractive prison" was used in studies of organizational paradoxes.
Once you have been lured to an "attractive prison" to address a problem, a new, opposite problem is introduced and you are now stuck in a prison dealing with a new problem while forgetting about the old one.
An attractive prison also provides an opportunity to bombard people with strange and new information to trigger cognitive dissonance, which puts people in a primed psychological state to change their mind about something. The founder of the "Children of God" cult specialized in this tactic where he would agitate and then convert.
Basically, all cults are attractive prisons. They promise a higher truth amidst an obviously dishonest environment, then feed followers with fiction. Despite the fictitiousness, these tactics are wildly effective.